Advice for First-Time Homebuyers

If you are buying a home with someone
else, make sure they don't have any tax liens, owe back child support, or have
outstanding court judgments against them. Right before escrow closes, the…
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For the most part, you'll want to take title as tenants-in-common (TIC) when you own a home with one or more friends. Your only other option is to own it as Joint Tenants, which would prevent you…
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1. What is your Vision of Home? Ask anyone you're considering teaming up with for a house purchase to write
a Vision
of Home and fill out the Wants
& Needs Checklist. Discuss the…
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One of my clients was house hunting in a particular, 100-year-old neighborhood in Oakland, Calif. Very stroll-to-the-local-produce-market-esque. We found this lovely little Spanish-style cottage with…
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If you got your real estate information
from reality TV and infomercials, you'd think all there was to being a real estate
investor was fixing and flipping, then flaunting the cash you just made,…
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No matter what your financial stats are, they can almost always be better. This is a double-edged sword. It's great because with a little bit of work, most of us can improve the snapshot of our…
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That same night, or the next morning at the latest, the buyer sits wide-eyed in bed thinking they paid too much for the place. The seller gets their agent on the horn and complains that they were…
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Make sure you get a pre-approval for a mortgage, not a pre-qualification. A pre-qualification is where you give a mortgage broker a hypothetical set of credit scores, income, etc., and they give you…
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Mortgage brokers work on commission, which are paid by you, by the lender, or by both you and the lender. If you work with a mortgage broker, the industry norm is for them to charge you an…
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Whether or not to pay points is really just a matter of figuring out (a) whether you can afford to pay one-percent of the mortgage amount in addition to the rest of your closing costs, and (b)…
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